Stacey D'Erasmo on The Road Home by Rose Tremain: She proves herself again magically capable of animating a character from the inside out, illuminating the heart of one modern exile with an extraordinary degree of love, imagination and insight.

The model builders - the artist and his studio assistant - take turns placing thermos bottles, stacks of glass ashtrays, books and other objects into the frame, then they add a row of miniature electric streetlamps, dim the room lights and suddenly - "magically" - the scene resembles a city at night.

The writer knows that something is supposed to work or make sense, and so our little writer brain magically fills in what’s missing, or glosses over parts that don’t work, or ignores the fact that we’ve used the same word seventy-jillion times.